Trivia for
Tarzan of the Apes (1918)

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• Young men from the New Orleans Athletic Club played the ape parts.
  
  
• In one scene a lion is supposed to crawl through the window of Tarzan's cabin to devour Jane. Tarzan grabs him and pulls him out. Rumor has it that the old and drugged lion turned on Elmo Lincoln who stabbed and killed him. "I stepped on him to beat my chest. As my foot pressed down on him, the remaining air in his lungs escaped with a loud whoosh. I was already shaken and you should have seen me jump!" The lion wound up as a lobby display when the picture opened on Broadway. However, Enid Markey and others from the cast have disputed this version of events, saying that the lion was actually killed off screen. Contrary to popular opinion, the death of the lion is not actually shown on screen. It is already dead when Elmo stabs at it, barely puncturing its skin.
  
  
• Production began with Stellan Windrow playing Tarzan. After five weeks of shooting, Windrow quit to enlist in the First World War. Footage of him swinging from vines remains in the final film.
  
  

• Originally, this movie was three hours long and was divided into three parts. The longest extant print is seventy-three minutes in length.
  
  
• Louisiana was chosen as the main shooting location because of the cooperation of the residents of Morgan City, the lush jungle vegetation, bayous, waterways, abundant black extras, and facilities such as hotels, a railway-serviced wharf and an adjacent storage warehouse.
  
  
• Sets, costumes and equipment were sent from Los Angeles by rail car.
  
  
• For the African village scenes native huts were constructed and 800 locals were hired as extras. The village was burned to the ground for the final village scene.
  
  
• National Film Corporation, the production company, hired eight acrobats to play apes, for which costumes made from goat skins and elaborate masks were constructed.
  
  
• Over 300 locals in Morgan City, LA, were hired as cannibal extras for $1.75 a day.
  
  
• Edgar Rice Burroughs sold the film rights for "Tarzan of the Apes" to the National Film Corporation on June 6, 1916. He received a record $5,000 cash advance on royalties, $50,000 in company stock and 5% of gross receipts.
  
  
• Elmo Lincoln was stockier than original Tarzan Stellan Windrow and had trouble doing the sequences in the trees, so they kept the footage shot of Windrow.
  
  

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